How Does Google Work?

The dual finance/tech sides of me find this to be fascinating.. Click on the picture to get the full effect of how Google makes your search query work (and how it makes money off it).

via http://the99percent.com/

Google Voice Blog: Call Phones From Your Email Account

Google is at it again.. this is really pretty cool: use Google Voice to make free domestic calls from your Gmail account. More here.

Google Chrome Speed Tests

Pretty good way of advertising a browser's speed. Liked this from Google.

Does Google Own Us?

Paranoia or prudence? Thought-provoking take on the Google empire.

via Hungry Beast

Browser Usage Stats: Chrome Grows While IE and Firefox Shrink

An analytics company called Net Applications has determined that Google’s Chrome web browser is stealing market share from both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

In January, Chrome grew by 0.57% to 5.20% of the browser market. Meanwhile, Firefox shrunk by 0.20% to 24.41% and IE shrunk 0.51% to 62.18%. Safari and Opera both stayed put, more or less; grew 0.05% to 4.51% and shrunk 0.02% to 2.38%.

You might recall that Chrome passed Safari to grab third place in the browser market a month ago; it seems probable that the ground Chrome is gaining is at Microsoft and Mozilla’s expense, although no direct causation has been definitively established by Net Applications’ numbers.

Chrome has a number of advantages, not the least of which is the fact that it’s much faster than the competition. It’s been derided for its lack of certain valued features in the past, but has gradually been introducing them. For example, it just put extensions and bookmark sync into its live Windows build a week ago. Google has been running ad campaigns on sites like, and it seems like it’s been working.

Now the Bad News: Internet Explorer 6

5.20% of the market is actually impressive for a browser as new as Chrome, but Internet Explorer still dominates. IE8 takes up 22.31% of the market and IE7 carries 14.58%, but it’s upsetting to see that IE6 on its own is still the second most popular browser version (behind IE8) at 20.07%.

At Mashable, we’ve made it clear that we believe IE6 must die. It has stifled innovation and left its users vulnerable to security threats for too long, and compared to modern browsers it’s a hassle to use.

Google agrees, and so do many other companies; that’s why it’s phasing out support for the browser, hoping that in doing so it can convince users to either upgrade to a newer version or switch to a competing browser like Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

The good news is that this seems to be working, albeit very, very slowly. IE6 has been declining gradually for months. It just can’t happen quickly enough.

via feedproxy.google.com

Now that they've begun supporting extensions, I'm becoming an even bigger Google Chrome fan. Blazing fast..

Easy Way To See Pompeii

Head over to Italy and check out the famous ancient Pompeii ruins - in 3D from your computer using Google Street View. Check it out here.

via Mashable

Language Cheats

I love Google. They just continue to roll out new, free tools.

Google Translate is one of their newest services, and it offers the ability to translate words from one language to another as you type, in real time. If you upload a document, it will translate the entire text to the language of your choice. It also has a speech feature that helps you determine how to say a word with just a click of the mouse.

I can't necessarily see how I would use this very often, but the usability of it is really cool. The video below is a tutorial from Google on how the tool works.

Google Just Made Garmin Pretty Irrelevant

Google just introduced another product. It's called Google Maps Navigation, and it provides GPS guided turn-by-turn navigation for free.

For now, it's only available on phones with Google's Android operating system, but I have no doubt it will be rolled out to many more devices before very long. The days of paying for this kind of information are clearly numbered, courtesy of the good folks in Mountain View, CA.

Will Google Voice Rock the Wireless Phone Industry?

I got my Google Voice invite yesterday, and I'm digging into how the service works. Imagine being able to receive all your calls, texts and voicemails (from home, cell, work, etc.) at one number, and that's Voice in a nutshell. All US calls are free, you can receive voicemail by way of email or text, and even record calls and store them online for later listening. And if you need to call Directory Assistance, GOOG-411 is free too (of course).

PC World published a great article a couple weeks ago that summarizes what Voice is and is not. But it also laid out why the wireless telecoms in particular (like Verizon Wireless and AT&T) are worried they could turn into mere "dumb pipes" that merely transmit data for cell devices if Voice is able to gather steam and gain subscribers. If Voice can provide and replace the types of 'value-added' services that are the wireless telecoms' bread and butter right now, it could be painful for their bottom line.

It'll be interesting to watch how this plays out. In the meantime, I'm reading that porting my number to Google Voice may be available sometime in the fall of 2009 too. I'll probably check into it again when that becomes available.

Wayne Robinson (.net)

Filed under: google